Wednesday, October 26, 2005
New Ways of Seeing
I've always been a proponent of open access to scientific research - it makes work more believable, but also more useful - and I was thrilled to see the NIH move in this direction. In support of this decision, a number of nonprofit scientific publishers have offered to help NIH achieve its open research goals, for which they all get much love. If only the Authors Guild was as wise.
Long-standing thought has been that color vision was at least largely about eyes - cones, to be exact - and less about the brain. New research indicates that this may be false. Rochester scientists have found that there is little to no correlation of cone types and distribution to color perception - we all see the same colors in different ways. In a related experiment, they found that people's color perceptions could be altered by wearing tinted lenses, which is really cool in its potential for further making fun of those who wear color contacts.
Long-standing thought has been that color vision was at least largely about eyes - cones, to be exact - and less about the brain. New research indicates that this may be false. Rochester scientists have found that there is little to no correlation of cone types and distribution to color perception - we all see the same colors in different ways. In a related experiment, they found that people's color perceptions could be altered by wearing tinted lenses, which is really cool in its potential for further making fun of those who wear color contacts.
